The Most Overlooked $10K/month Business You Can Start This Weekend - Ep. #336

Mike Herod (0:00)

I just signed a $30,000 contract for this fall. Spring break, we cleared $12,000 in one week, nine to noon, so you're done in the afternoon, right?

Chris Koerner (0:09)

That's like three hours of work.

Mike Herod (0:11)

Keep it simple, stupid. If you want to go all in, you can make a ton of money, pretty simply, for those who want to make three grand a month, this is easy. So in March to July, $50,600.

Chris Koerner (0:21)

Wow.

Mike Herod (0:22)

It was basically like eight, eight, and then we hit a 12, then we hit a 16, it just kept scaling up and up and up.

Chris Koerner (0:28)

I need to have a gong in here, because every time I discover a business that you really could start with no money, I just want to be like, we found one. That's cool. It is a business you could start with nothing.

Mike Herod (0:37)

Facebook post. That was it. No pictures, no nothing.

Chris Koerner (0:43)

Meet Mike. He's 50, got laid off after 20 years, and one night at 3.3 in the morning, he wrote a Facebook post from his garage. No photos, no website, no price. And that post became a $50,000 business in five months flat. Moms pay him $75 an hour per kid. The state of Florida pays him within 24 hours, and he just signed a $30,000 contract for two hours every Friday. His startup costs were under $450, and really, he collects money up front, so he could have started this with no money, and you can too. And by the end of this episode, you're going to know exactly how to copy him this weekend. I'm going to show you the exact post in a few minutes. And halfway through this episode, he's going to give you the one sentence that got the tool company to send him $5,000 of free gear. And at the end, I'm going to give you the one word that turned a side hustle into real contracts. And also, this whole thing, this whole business exists because Mike watches the channel, and he was inspired by it. So please enjoy. Why don't you start by telling us who you are and what you do?

Mike Herod (1:42)

Mike Herod here. I'm the owner of VoSkill. I'm more at trade school, and also we teach shock classes to seven to 18-year-olds based in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Chris Koerner (1:51)

How long did it take you to go from last day on the job to launching this? How much time elapsed there?

Mike Herod (1:56)

So last corporate W2 check was in March of 25, and then we got our first paying customer the week of Thanksgiving. But I had the idea for the first customer was seven days for the shock classes.

Chris Koerner (2:10)

Wow. Okay. So eight months, give or take, from your last paycheck to when you launched, but you didn't spend that whole time launching, you spent one week.

Mike Herod (2:18)

No, the whole time was basically five months licking my wounds, trying to find work, and then finally coming to the realization that we are going to open a school in a second, and yada, yada, yada. And then Thanksgiving, it was taking so long, like we got to pay the bills. So one Facebook post.

Chris Koerner (2:32)

How do you mean you didn't have the idea for seven days before?

Mike Herod (2:35)

Yeah. So the original is the trade school, which is HVAC, electrical, and low voltage. That's the original.

Chris Koerner (2:41)

Okay. So your woodworking business is not a trade school?

Mike Herod (2:44)

No, no, no, no. I saw all of these like bounce houses and a friend of ours sells girl TPs for birthday parties. I'm like, there's nothing for the boys, like nothing. So yeah, Thanksgiving week, I was like, we need money and Facebook post, woodworking birthday parties.

Chris Koerner (3:01)

Yeah.

Mike Herod (3:01)

That was it. No pictures, no nothing.

Chris Koerner (3:03)

Did you ever do anything with the trade school application at all?

Mike Herod (3:06)

No, it's still in there. We finally got approved this July.

Chris Koerner (3:09)

Okay. So you are going to go through the trade school. It's going to be a different business, but it's going to be fed by the woodworking business.

Mike Herod (3:14)

By the woodworking, yep.

Chris Koerner (3:16)

Beautiful. Okay. So you had the idea on what? November 20th?

Mike Herod (3:21)

Something like that, yeah.

Chris Koerner (3:22)

And you posted seven days later or you open?

Mike Herod (3:24)

No, I posted that day. And then we had parties, events, classes. I think at the time we called them woodworking events, booked that following week. All right.